Günter Schlienz - Orphée Aux Enfers
Günter Schlienz is inspired by Jacques Offenbach's operatic rendition of the Greek myth Orpheus. Offenbach's satirical take on Christoph Gluck's heart felt telling is titled Orpheus in the Underworld and slowly gained more fame and notoriety than any composition coming before. In Offenbach's version, Orpheus travels to the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice, but he really did not want to succeed nor did nor did Eurydice want him to. Eurydice was in love with Pluto and Orpheus had his own lover.
These sounds have greatly mutated in the one hundred and sixty five years since Offenbach's premier. Günter Schlienz using his amazing talent with synthesizer to create ethereal vibrato plucked strings on harp driven journey. Orphée Aux Enfers seems to pull lightly from Günter's repertoire creating a connection of sounds we have grown to expect, but more than anything Orphée Aux Enfers pushes past the glacial ambient melts to new sonic vistas. Günter Schlienz constructs an aural world of glowing crystals surging with radiance on a decent into an infinitely undefined journey within a world displaced from our own.
On the last track track titled Händel & Gluck, both composers composing versions of Orpheus before Offenbach, Günter Schlienz holds a deep futuristic rhythm as canvas for string like stalactites showing their timeless endurance. This gives way to a brief courtly affair that slowly erodes with time. The longest track titled Eurydike is the most hauntingly beautiful, an ambient sojourn most epitomizing Orpheus' mysterious surroundings in his trek through the underworld. Have listened through Orphée Aux Enfers many times now and have not clued in on Offenbach's cancan from this piece. Maybe the cancan in the overture has changed to something completely different and lurks before ears with it's own grin. Günter Schlienz has more sonic cleverness than most of us put together.
Released on vinyl by Silent State Recordings out of Frankfurt, Germany. The artwork and feel of this album has a real seventies vibe. Super diggin' it and many listeners will feel the same. Something unique, beautifully composed and built to stand through many generations of future ears. Only two hundred copies makes this very limited.
Links
Silent State Recordings - bandcamp
Guenter Schlienz - bandcamp
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